The Offtopicgrad Soviet: A Place to Discuss All Things Red
- Thread starter Cheezy the Wiz
- Start date
Gary Childress
Student for and of life
Maybe both doing away with centralized government along with private ownership of capital is the answer. I don't know. I think that would probably mean doing away with federal taxes and going only with local taxes. It would mean doing away with Federal programs like welfare, R&D and military spending and working only at the local level. Decentralization of power...it sounds like the answer. But what would then protect us from concentrated outside threats? Protecting us from outside threats would require a centralized government to fund and maintain an army. Then the whole thing starts to snowball again until someone somehow manages to dismantle it again. Or maybe we don't create a Federal army but only local armies. Then we're maybe like the Greek city states that defeated the Persians and then went on to fight among themselves.
The problem with localism is not that it is frequently incapable of dealing with larger problems, but also that it is frequently unwilling to deal with problems that are within their ability. And local elites, or at least majorities, are more likely to harm the weak and minorities, just because they can. This is why in American politics the people who most want to hurt other people are the most vocal opponents of central government.
While there are problems with the centralization of political power, localism really isn't an answer, because there is no problem is 'solves' without making multiple other problems much worse.
Gary Childress
Student for and of life
Isn't "localism" more democratic though, giving people more of a voice in their own affairs? It seems to me that the larger the centralized government the more we have bureaucrats telling us what to do instead of allowing us to participate in making the rules. It seems to me Democracy becomes more and more convoluted the larger and more centralized a government becomes. I think of the Waco Texas incident with the BATF, the "patriot act" or the Soviet Union and the gulags for people who dissented against the decisions of the central government. I suppose that could also happen on a local level equally well. You might get situations where a charismatic person can manipulate a local government for his/her own purposes. Corruption and injustice at the local level are certainly not unheard of.
But it seems like that sort of throws us back into the question of how do we avoid tyranny and enable more meaningful participation in making the rules. Or is that just not possible?
The experiences of different nations has been different. The US experience has very much been a case of the local governments being the primary source of tyranny, and the primary danger to liberty. Which doesn't mean that the federal government has always been on the side of the angels. It has not. But over the whole of American history it has been at least 100x better than the state and local governments.
And the reason for this is that at the state and local level it is vastly easier for a local majority to gain and keep power, and use that power in ways harmful to a large minority. Where the national majority is a far more diverse group, and does not gain the concentrated benefits from tyranny that local leaders gain.
Now the Tea Party, and what the Republicans have become over the past 20 odd years is actually a real danger of making the US government as tyrannical as the average state government. Conservatism has taken us a long distance in that direction. But the solution to that problem is not to just capitulate and give the tyrants a free victory by embracing localism.
Gary Childress
Student for and of life
This is a good point. With a Federal authority certain "universal" values can be upholded where local authorities may tend to focus more on specific values associated with specific groups that dominate the locality. There is certainly federal corruption out there but in the final analysis, I think the press is pretty fair to decent at exposing federal corruption more than it is local corruption.
"Local values" is actually a point often used by people who support localism and states rights. But in nearly all cases it means that they simply want a more oppressive local government than the US Constitution allows for. And they want to cripple welfare spending and economic regulations. So really localism means little more than that local elites more easily run roughshod over local populations.
Gary Childress
Student for and of life
Our reds seem to be on vacation this week. Where has everyone gone? I was looking forward to some feedback from some of our reds on my latest posts here.
ReindeerThistle
Zimmerwald Left
Sorry, Gary. Busy week. Lurking mostly and posting an occasional thoughtless post. Rest assured I will check out the posts and come up with suitably Marxist-Leninist answer.
Gary Childress
Student for and of life
No worries, just wanted to make sure our "reds" are still out there in CFC land. You and Cheezy seem to be the most active in making thoughtful posts but I haven't seen some of the others out there, Traitorfish for example.
It seems like ever since the proposal was made to merge the Chamber into the Tavern fewer people are vising the Chamber. Maybe people are anticipating the demise of the chamber and therefore concentrating their posts more in the Tavern? Sort of like a self fulfilling prophecy as far as complaints about lack of participation in the Chamber go. I really do think the Chamber was more busy than this before.
It seems like ever since the proposal was made to merge the Chamber into the Tavern fewer people are vising the Chamber. Maybe people are anticipating the demise of the chamber and therefore concentrating their posts more in the Tavern? Sort of like a self fulfilling prophecy as far as complaints about lack of participation in the Chamber go. I really do think the Chamber was more busy than this before.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
I am both busy and have nothing to add to the conversation right now.
Gary Childress
Student for and of life
EDIT: Never mind. I deliberated a little more on my post and changed my mind a bit about it.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
It keeps me out of trouble.
A lot of my work lately has been about nationalities in the Baltic, you may be interested to know. About the relationship between nationalizing states, national minorities, their external homelands, and international bodies.
A lot of my work lately has been about nationalities in the Baltic, you may be interested to know. About the relationship between nationalizing states, national minorities, their external homelands, and international bodies.
If you were to ever start a thread about this, I'd surely be!
Mrdie
Founder of eRegime
- Joined
- Jul 26, 2005
- Messages
- 677
As a note, there's this forum game going on where competing communist tendencies rule almost all the world in the 90's, this thread reminds me of it: http://z13.invisionfree.com/eRegime/index.php?act=idx 
As a note, I've never seen criticisms of the way governments were constitutionally set up in Eastern Europe, with Presidiums and whatnot. It would have been interesting to see these structures operate in a multi-party context.
Case in point, Albania:
* http://bjoerna.dk/dokumentation/Albanian-Constitution-1976.htm#Part Two
* http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/albaniaconst.htm#chv
As a note, I've never seen criticisms of the way governments were constitutionally set up in Eastern Europe, with Presidiums and whatnot. It would have been interesting to see these structures operate in a multi-party context.
Case in point, Albania:
* http://bjoerna.dk/dokumentation/Albanian-Constitution-1976.htm#Part Two
* http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/albaniaconst.htm#chv
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
Yo, that's a really interesting and important question.
edit: (perhaps because I find executions so abhorrent, so when a political system justifies them, it becomes a fascinating mental exercise of understanding that system's flaws)
edit: (perhaps because I find executions so abhorrent, so when a political system justifies them, it becomes a fascinating mental exercise of understanding that system's flaws)
